The acclaimed Kronos Quartet will perform at the 2019 Melbourne International Arts Festival, the Festival announced today. The innovative string quartet will bring two programs to Jonathan Holloway’s final festival as Artistic Director, before the Melbourne International Arts Festival merges with White Night to form a new event, with Hannah Fox and Gideon Obarzanek at the helm.

Kronos QuartetKronos Quartet’s A Thousand Thoughts. Photo © Mary Cybulski

The iconic San Francisco-based string quartet, who were last in Australia in 2009, will perform in A Thousand Thoughts, which is being described as a “live documentary” by filmmaker Sam Green. Green has made a film “not actually about Kronos – because he said no one wants to see a biopic – but about all the music they’ve played and the people they’ve worked with,” Holloway told Limelight. “So new interviews with Philip Glass, with Steve Reich, with John Adams, with Tanya Tagaq, with Wu Man, with Laurie Anderson, with Yo-Yo Ma, who they’ve played with and co-commissioned with.”

“And the interviews are genius,” he says. “Sam stands on stage and kind of narrates the film and then cuts to the film and the Kronos play...